Microsoft Debuts Windows Live Essentials Beta

Microsoft rolled out the new beta for its Windows Live Essentials, which features multimedia and productivity applications such as Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Sync, Writer, Mail and Family Safety. Business users may gravitate toward Windows Live Mail, which supports multiple e-mail accounts and brings calendar and RSS feeds onto the platform, and Sync, which allows files to be synchronized across multiple PCs. Despite its traditional base in desktop software, Microsoft has been increasingly focused on cloud-based applications as a vital component of future strategy.

Microsoft began rolling out the new beta for Windows Live Essentials on June
24, offering up a variety of services for photo sharing, blogging, e-mail and
document productivity.
The beta includes programs such as Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Sync,
Writer, Mail and Family Safety. Besides offering a way to share photos and
video among one's contacts, the suite also includes tools for organizing e-mail
accounts, synchronizing files across multiple PCs and accessing those files
from the cloud. Among the offerings:

Windows Live Photo Gallery lets
users manage their images. New facial recognition technology allows the program
to automatically tag people in those photos, or at least make an attempt.
Geo-tagging, where GPS coordinates are baked
into an image, is also supported by Photo Gallery.

Movie Maker offers granular
options for saving videos (including more mobile-device-friendly formats) and
customizing settings, and supports recording from a Webcam.
The Windows Live Mail e-mail
client supports multiple e-mail accounts, and brings calendar and RSS feeds
onto the platform. The various e-mail accounts can be color-coded for easier
management. "Windows Live Mail has the Photo Mail feature where I can create
personalized albums within an e-mail which stores photos privately in
SkyDrive," Brandon LeBlanc, a spokesperson for Microsoft, wrote in a June 24
posting on The Windows Blog, "so whomever I send e-mail to can view the photos
but without taking up space in their e-mail account or taking a long time to
download."
The new version of Windows Live
Messenger bundles a variety of social-networking services into the user's
message stream, in keeping with recent Web communication trends that seek to
coalesce outside applications into existing services; users can update their
Facebook or Windows Live status through Messenger, as well as comment on their
friends' recent Facebook postings.
For more business-centric users, though, the most useful tool in this
particular collection may be Windows
Live Sync, which allows users to synchronize documents and other files on
multiple PCs. With Sync, users can also enable remote access to any of their
PCs.
"I currently have 5 PCs connected and syncing together with Sync," LeBlanc
wrote in his blog posting. "I have 2 folders I am syncing-one for work
documents and another for personal stuff. I keep them separate. I am able to
choose to have each of these folders sync with -SkyDrice synced storage,' which
is 2GB of free online cloud storage for my files. Everyone gets this today with
Sync."
Despite its legacy as a desktop company, Microsoft has increasingly focused
on cloud-based functionality. In a March 4 speech at the University
of Washington, Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer suggested that cloud services represent "the bet for our
company."
"Companies like ours, can they move and dial in and focus and embrace?"
Ballmer asked an audience comprising primarily students. "That's where we're
programmed. You shouldn't get into this industry if you don't want things to
change. The field of endeavor keeps moving forward."
Microsoft's recent cloud-based initiatives include Windows Azure, SQL Azure,
Web-based Office applications and Xbox Live. Despite the cloud focus, however,
the company's fortunes are still largely tied to the performance of its
desktop-based software, and probably for good reason; Microsoft's other bit of
news on June 24 was that Windows 7, the latest version of its operating system,
has sold 150 million copies since its October 2009 release.

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.